ABSTRACT
No writer contributed more to the unmasking style in social theory than Karl Marx. This chapter explores the techniques he pioneered: reduction, inversion, deflation and weaponization. Marx advanced them, by his own declaration, to free the working class from illusions and to facilitate its revolutionary mission.
Marx particularly decries the “illusions” of politics and religion. His analysis of Judaism is especially scathing. He unmasks it as the religious quintessence of a divisive civil society. When this society is abolished, says Marx, so too will Judaism be abolished with it and religion in general.
Unmasking techniques were employed with great violence in the Soviet Union, the first Marxist state. Paradoxically, the determination to root out all dubious motives and class backgrounds created incentives to disguise. Masking – hiding behind phoney labels – was a necessary defense against a state resolved to destroy all that was deemed impure.
